We learned something from these videos, all right: Real sex isn't that entertaining

The big question I faced upon the arrival of a free copy of the "Better Sex Video Series" was whether I should watch it alone or with my boyfriend.

The series represents a brand-spanking-new remake of a 1991 series you might have seen advertised in magazines. It's not pornography — it's adult sex education, recommended by a panel of doctors and designed to improve your relationship. Or at least that's the promise of the folks at the Sinclair Institute, a New York-based company that specializes in sex-related items.

To truly test this $49.85 product, we definitely had to watch it as a couple. Besides, I needed a second opinion as to whether this was more than high-priced pornography.

Then I opened the box and found it ran 235 minutes. I'd have to start on my own.

Disc 1, "Advanced Sexual Positions and Techniques," opened with an anatomy lesson, then got into touching and other basic information. There was nothing advanced about any of this, of course, but they probably figured that calling them "beginner" tapes would go over about as well as size-small condoms.

But it did look like real people having sex. The lighting was stark, the close-ups revealing — every jiggle filmed in explicit detail. The narrator sounded unfazed by what was shown, droning like a flight-safety tape: Insert one end of the metal buckle into the other, pull to tighten, remember to touch her most erogenous zones.

The funny thing about real sex is that it's not geared to entertain a viewing public. It's a little slow. Perhaps there's a reason pornography has to sex up the sex.

I got through Disc 1 just in time for a launch party at the Museum of Sex in New York. There, surrounded by photos and drawings of naked men, a panel of five experts endorsed the series and decried the terrible state of sex knowledge in America.

One doctor said that a young man recently came in complaining that he lost his erection after he had an orgasm; another thought he had premature ejaculation because he couldn't hold out for an hour.

My partner leaned over and whispered that these guys might just lack common sense.

I asked the panel how we could really be so ignorant when the media saturate us with sex all the time. Suddenly a buzz-cut woman with cat glasses jumped up from two rows back and yelled, "It's because of pornography!"

The next morning we flipped through Disc 2 — 22 sex tips. My master of the remote fast-forwarded over seduction and erotic dance and landed us on a boating scene, which showed a couple on the foredeck of a boat that appeared to be under sail. Whoever was at the helm must have gotten an eyeful.

Disc 3, "Erotic Sex Play and Beyond," demonstrated the joys of toys, "quickies" and a fantasy sequence in which a woman dressed as a sexy prison guard and her prisoner husband made love through the bars. They didn't tell you how to go about building a home jail cell. There was a section on anal sex and one on watching real pornography to improve your sex life.

But was "Better Sex" itself pornography? My boyfriend said yes; I said I wasn't sure. It did enhance my appreciation of regular movie sex: The "Better Sex" version of bondage, for example, couldn't compare to the sight of Vince Vaughn lashed to the bedposts in "Wedding Crashers." And none of the seductive stripping could hold a candle to Kim Basinger in "9 ½ Weeks."

"Better Sex" did give a realistic and comprehensive overview of the mechanics of sex. It just didn't capture much passion.

Perhaps it's related to what W.B. Yeats meant when he said the tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul. But to remedy that could take more than a $49.85 set of videos.

Faye Flam writes for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Her Carnal Knowledge column appears Wednesdays in

The Seattle Times.